Slide 3 - Build Yakima-W 1/4 Geocell

Introduction

In this exercise you'll learn how to create a preview mesh.

Create A Preview Mesh

This instruction set teaches you to create a preview mesh.

  1. Select Worksheet » Long Clip Plane.
  2. Examine the hierarchy.
  3. Select File » Import Geotiff for Elevation from the main menu.
  4. This displays a dialog box.
  5. Select RAINIER.TIF and click Open.
  6. The software creates the preview mesh and moves the camera. This is a picture of the worksheet.
  7. Examine the hierarchy.
  8. Left click the small + to the left of the group node named Previews*.
  9. Continue to expand nodes until you can see the entire preview mesh node-set. This is a picture of the hierarchy.

Configure The ExportOptionsLayer

This instruction set teaches you to configure the ExportOptionsModifier.

  1. Examine the hierarchy.
  2. Double click the modifier named ExportOptionsLayer.
  3. This displays modifier parameters in the property editor.
  4. Scroll down and find the Place The New Nodes At This Location In The Hierarchy property group.
  5. Set Place New Nodes Here to Scene\Master\quadtree_2x1\yakima_7_pt_5.
    This rather complicated seeming address is actually quite simple. It's just the location in the scene graph where new nodes are placed by the Create Terrain command. Don't worry if these groups don't actually exist; the Create Terrain command creates them if necessary.
  6. Export path construction is as follows:
    [ place nodes beneath Scene ] + [ in a group named Master ] + [ use the correct quadtree address ] + [ and a very descriptive place named indicator ]
  7. Examine the following full-geocell example image. You are building the bright orange upper left quarter of the geocell. This is a picture of the worksheet.
    You are building a 1/4 geocell model representing the 2x1 quadrant of the geocell. Therefore the correct quadrant address is 2x1. This doesn't "really" matter and it won't affect terrain generation but good organization of data is best practice.
  8. Scroll down and find the Create Terrain Data In This Directory property group.
  9. Set Export To This Directory to quadtree_2x1_yakima_7_pt_5.
    This rather complicated seeming address is actually quite simple. This is the location on disk where terrain built from this tile is exported. Again the name is not necessarily important except in terms of its descriptiveness. You can use the default paged_terrain but that doesn't tell you anything specific about the data.

Configure The GeometryLayer

This instruction set teaches you to configure the GeometryLayer.

  1. Examine the hierarchy.
  2. Right click over the modifier named GeometryLayer.
  3. Select Tessellation: 4 from the listed options.
  4. Examine the following full-geocell example image: This is a picture of the worksheet.
    You are building a 1/4 geocell model representing the 2x1 quadrant of the geocell. Since a full geocell is composed of 8×8 tiles, 4 is the correct tessellation to produce 7.5 minute tiles for a 1/4 geocell model.

Create The Preview Texture

This instruction set teaches you to generate a preview texture.

  1. Examine the hierarchy.
  2. Right click over the modifier named DynamicTextureLayer.
  3. Select Force Regeneration from the listed options.
  4. Scenome generates a texture while you watch: This is a picture of the worksheet.
    Scenome streams the GEOTIFF imagery from the hard disk and builds a 1024×1024 texture for the preview mesh.
  5. While Scenome works in the background, let's do some work ourselves.
  6. If the mesh seems a bit dark, double click the material node named Lat: [46.50 to 47.00] Long: [-122.00 to -121.50].
  7. This displays material properties in the property editor.
  8. Scroll down and find the Colors property group.
  9. Set Ambient Color to a nice light gray - but not too light. Try 102,102,102. This is a picture of the worksheet.
    Proceed to the next page when preview texture generation is complete.